Many portable electronic devices include displays for displaying various types of images. Examples of such displays include electrowetting displays (EWDs), liquid crystal displays (LCDs), electrophoretic displays (EPDs), light emitting diode displays (LED displays), etc. In electrowetting displays, the resistance of the electrolyte in a fluid in the pixel areas decreases the effective voltage of the pixel area. FIG. 1 illustrates a pixel area 100 represented as a simplified circuit. As can be seen, the pixel area 100 can be represented as including a voltage source 102, a thin film transistor (TFT) 104, storage capacitance Cs 106, capacitance of the area of the pixel's electrode Cew 108 and REGG, which represents the resistance of the electrolyte.
Equation 1 below illustrates the relationship of the parameters that influence the voltage drop in the pixel area 100, where t line is a line time, Vout equals Vsource minus Vkb, where Vkb is the kickback voltage drop present in all active matrix displays. As previously noted Cew is a pixel capacitance that is related to the area of the pixels' electrode, and Cs is a storage capacitance of the pixel area.
                              V          REGGdrop                =                              [                                          V                out                            -                                                V                  out                                *                                  (                                      1                    -                                          exp                      ⁡                                              (                                                                              -                                                          t                              line                                                                                                                                          R                              EGG                                                        *                                                          C                              EW                                                                                                      )                                                                              )                                                      ]                    *                      [                                          C                EW                                            (                                                      C                    S                                    +                                      C                    EW                                                  )                                      ]                                              (        1        )            
In conventional electrowetting displays, the pixel electrode is a flat layer underneath the pixel area and thus, has a large area. Accordingly, REGG can be relatively large, for example, up to 300 mega ohms. Thus, the voltage drop attributable to REGG can be significant thereby greatly affecting the effective voltage of the pixel area.